How to Produce an Effective Survey to Learn More About Your Clients

How well do you really know your clients? Have you ever asked them why they keep coming back or how you could improve their customer experience?

You probably have plenty of clients that are only too happy to tell you where you are going wrong. Generally the most helpful advice however does not come from super-critical clients. In fact, neither does the best complimentary feedback always come from outgoing and friendly clients. So how do you unlock those useful insights to help you get a better understanding of how to continually improve the running of your salon?

Phorest’s Salon Software automatically sends every client who books online an email asking them to rate their experience out-of-five and leave a comment. Any rating that’s 4/5 or 5/5 they can share on Facebook with hundreds of their friends. It’s a great way to find out about staff, your services and to generate hundreds of referrals over time through your clients’ hard-earned connections.

However, if you want to ask something specific or gain insights into the behaviour and opinions of your clients, then an anonymous online survey can help you go even deeper into their psyche.

1 – There are a number of free and useful survey websites out there. I recommend a site called Survey Monkey.

2 – Sign-up. Create a username and password. Don’t forget to put these details somewhere safe. If you create a survey, get clients to fill it out and you can’t log back in, you’ve just wasted their time and you have no information.

3 – Click on ‘Create Survey’, give your survey a title and select a category e.g. customer feedback. Be careful in picking a title though. Always pick one that’s suitable for a client to view.

4 – Just start popping in your questions. I suggest that you sit down first and really think through what you are trying to find out. Do you want to know what your clients think of the products you stock? Is it around what your clients think about the location, decor and ambiance of your salon?

5 – Keep it to less than ten questions. Five or six is fine. Any more and you’ll just get people clicking random options to get the survey finished.

6 – Click on ‘Send Survey’ once you’re done and then you’ll get a link. Now you can pop it into an email or post it on your Facebook page etc.

Expert Tips

– Don’t run a competition around for a survey. You’ll only get skewed information. People will inevitably be overtly nice if they think that there’s something to gain. 20 genuine responses are better than 120 with false information in them.

– If you’re sending it out through the email function on Phorest’s Salon Software, be targeted in how you filter it. Perhaps you want to create two different surveys – one aimed at men and one at women, or maybe you want to target it via treatment types, age etc. Get to know your different client categories.

– If you’re sending it out via email, don’t personalise it. Of course we generally encourage you to personalise all marketing information, but in the case of a survey, if a client sees their name at the top they’ll instantly think that you know it’s coming back from them as opposed to being anonymous.

– Think about your questions and keep them neutral. Asking ‘Why do you love product X?’ is a misleading question. You’re asking why they love it, not if they love it. In fact you should ask something along the lines of, ‘After using product X, out of five I would rate it: (1 bring terrible, 5 being excellent)’. After this question you can ask why they gave this rating or perhaps would they purchase it again. You have be completely open in your survey questions to get an honest insight that will benefit your marketing and your salon.

Want some one-to-one advice on your survey? Send a link to your survey to my email address below and I’ll review it for you before you send it out. Please include your phone number, location name and salon name also.

Connor Keppel is the Marketing Manager at Phorest. You can contact Connor on 0207 100 9290 (UK) or 01 8747800 (Irl) or by email: connor.keppel@phorest.com